Good Deal Hunting

Walk onto any car lot. Count the seconds. 2, 3, 4, 5... somewhere behind you a salesman detaches and spirals closer. 7, 8, 9... keep walking if you like, and pretend you don't notice, but he'll be on you soon, regardless. 10, 11, 12... "She's a beaut, ain't she?" Twelve seconds. That's how long it takes the salesman to start working you over with his time-tested patter.

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There comes a point when a man gets tired of fighting the endless parade of car dealers, shoe-store clerks, mattress impresarios, and gym reps lining up to bilk him for his hard-earned dollar. One day it no longer seems crucial that we nail the best deal. Who cares if we pay a little more? We flatter ourselves that we have bigger things to worry about. That the money we might have saved wasn't worth the time or energy it would have required to save it. Success, we like to think, absolves us of sweating the nickels and dimes. And anyway, a salesman has to make money, too, right?

Still, most men know that deep down, it's just apathy. Or worse, as long as we're being honest, a distaste for confrontation. A growing inability, as the years pass, to shake off the dreaminess, take a firm grasp of the situation, look the sales guy square in the face, and say: "Sorry—$7,000? For a sofa? You must be high."

Call it the chump tax: that extra amount we end up paying because we're just too damn lazy to object. Which is not to diminish how challenging it would be to tirelessly negotiate every last transaction. Then again, what if you did just that? What if you dedicated an entire month to repealing the chump tax? Fighting for every last penny? How much money could you save? What would you learn? I decided to find out.

The experiment begins

It's not like I'm averse to negotiation. Every now and then I'll rouse myself to haggle over a restaurant check—but only if the service was bad. Even then I generally defer.

The only way to break these habitual behaviors, I figured, was by sheer force of will. So I decided to begin my campaign with whatever item I happened to need next. It was moments after this decision that the cursor on my computer screen stopped moving because the batteries in my mouse died.

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On paper, the plan looked simple: Walk into the local pharmacy, slap the batteries on the counter, and, upon hearing the price, look the cashier in the face and object. Easy, right?

First mistake: I failed to remember that batteries were kept behind the counter, so I lost precious momentum wandering the store. When I arrived at the counter, which was elevated a foot above floor level like a judge's bench, I felt like a 16-year-old asking for cigarettes. A grim-looking, sixtyish woman stared down at me.

"Two-pack or four-pack?" she asked.

"Four-pack," I squeaked.

"Good choice, because you get two extra," she said, placing the batteries in front of me.

Hold on a sec... What? The four-pack comes with six batteries? Not a bad deal, actually. I was too flummoxed to argue.

Back on the sidewalk, I pulled myself together. I'd visit another store and try again.

"How many?" said the Indian guy at the magazine shop.

"Two," I said. (I wasn't going to make that mistake again.)

He was distracted by a customer buying a lottery ticket, giving me a little more time to brace myself for the inevitable confrontation.

"Just two, right?" he asked.

I nodded. That's right, bub. Two.

Then, as I stood staring, he grabbed a four-pack, ripped it open, and plunked two batteries before me. "Two dollars," he said.

I blinked. What the...

Out on the sidewalk again, I replayed the encounter. Who expects a guy to rip open the packaging? It wasn't right.

More determined than ever, I strode off toward another pharmacy five blocks away. The cashier's counter was in the back. It wasn't raised like in the first place, but there were two cashiers, big Latino ladies, sharing the same bored look. Behind them, two beefy dudes in white coats prepared prescriptions. One against four: Were these fair odds?

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I stepped into the batting cage. "Four-pack of double-A batteries, please," I said. The woman turned, grabbed the batteries, placed them on the counter, and started ringing them up. Now was my moment.

"Whoa," I said, "$3.78? $3.78 for four?" I steeled myself. "You must be high."

It came out sounding strange. Strangled. Both cashiers stared at me. The air in the pharmacy seemed to go still. It was a stillness that said: We have a crazy person in the room. "It's $3.49 plus tax," the cashier said carefully, her eyes locked on mine.

I paid full price and went home.

Finding a better way to haggle

Okay, so maybe belligerence wasn't the best approach. Clearly I needed a boost from the pros. The world, as it turns out, is teeming with negotiation experts. Most of them are busy facilitating multimillion-dollar deals, and you wouldn't think they'd slow down to consult with an average dude on how to save a dime on a pack of batteries. But negotiation, I quickly discovered, isn't only about money; it's about principle.

"You started with the hardest one," says G. Richard Shell, J.D., a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, when I tell him about the battery debacle. "You're thinking it should be easy because it's so trivial, but it's actually very hard. The profit margin on a battery is pretty small. As soon as you cut the price you've eliminated the margin. Why would they do that?"

They wouldn't, obviously. But how was I supposed to know the profit margin on a battery? Shell says low margins correlate with lower prices and higher volumes. "That's basic economics," he says. So a low-volume store, like a boutique, is a much more sensible place to look for a deal than a high-volume pharmacy. In other words, if you ever find yourself waiting in line to pay for something, you're facing an uphill battle.

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But for every obstacle there's a strategy. "Pick a day when there aren't many customers," says Roger Volkema, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University. By his logic, even a high-volume department store might be willing to cut a deal at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Volkema also suggests keeping an eye out for store clusters. Stores offering similar products often cluster together to cannibalize one another's customer base, but a savvy negotiator can use that against them. "If you go to a neighborhood with three or four mattress stores, you have more leverage.

"It's important to have alternatives in mind when you walk into a store, even if the alternative is the status quo," Volkema continues. "If you enter a negotiation without alternatives, you're going to reveal in some way -- perhaps even nonverbally -- that 'I have to have this item, I'm sold on this.'"

The same reasoning explains why you're more likely to score a bargain on high-end wine than on a gallon of milk. You can always go another week without a glass of Conn Valley, but what are you going to pour on your Wheaties? Supermarkets know this. Hardware stores know this. And so, at the opposite extreme, do jewelry stores, designer-clothing boutiques, and art galleries.

Chain stores, Volkema adds, are also tough to negotiate with, because their economies of scale permit lower margins. Plus, prices are often controlled by their corporate headquarters. "A family-owned business will have much more flexibility," he says.

Wine and dine

In the days following my conversations with Shell and Volkema, I began honing an intuitive sense for negotiating prospects. It got to a point where I could catch a store's vibe without ever stepping inside. The stores less susceptible to negotiation felt hard, brittle. They had no give. The more susceptible ones had a soft feeling to them. My local wine shop exuded a sort of cakey softness. Upscale product, neighborhood shop, owner-operated, probably valued repeat customers.

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One slow afternoon I wandered in and asked about a $13 bottle of wine a friend had recommended. By luck I spoke to the manager, a middle-aged blonde with a German accent. Yeah, they had it, she said. Nine bucks. The $4 savings almost stopped me, but I asked if she could offer a discount if I bought a case. Ten percent, she said, too quickly. I pondered this a second, and came back with my counteroffer. "If you can give me 15 percent, I'll take two cases."

I saw the line hit home. For a woman who's selling inventory one bottle at a time, my offer held an obvious appeal. A remark by Volkema came to mind: People will not negotiate unless they believe you can help them or hurt them. "Yes, we can do that," she said.

As I walked out the door, I felt a quiet triumph, which was heightened by a subtle sense of transgression, like I had just scored a kiss from a pretty girl. There was more to this than saving a few bucks.

Over the next few weeks, other secrets revealed themselves. I discovered that if you sweet-talk the membership guy at the local gym, he'll throw in an extra month with a half-year commitment. That a bored car-rental rep may give you a discount on an upgrade if you walk up to the counter and say, "Any free upgrades today?" That bed-and-breakfasts anxious to fill rooms will offer complimentary ski-lift tickets with a little prodding. That if you present a cashier with a dinged product and ask for a discount, even at a "hard" store like Staples, he's usually too lazy to argue. That if you threaten your cable-service provider with cancellation, the rep may lower your bill and throw in a few upgrades.

At the same time, I began developing a healthy respect for the obstacles that stores place in a determined negotiator's way. For instance: price lining. Most stores will offer a range of prices for every product category. The flat-screen TVs at a typical electronics store, for instance, range from $250 to $7,200. This allows the sales guy to say, "So, how much do you want to spend?" As soon as you answer, you tip your hand. "Show me the products you have" is Volkema's suggested reply. That puts the ball back in the sales guy's court, while further investing him in the outcome of the deal.

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Know before you go

It helped, I found, to research the exact product I wanted online before going in to buy it. Salesmen take advantage of the fact that you're trying to decide two things at once: which model to buy, and how to get the most for your buck. If you figure out the answer to the first question in advance, you're free to focus on the second. I knew, for instance, that I was interested in the Canon PowerShot A560, or else a more advanced model, the PowerShot SD1000. But when the sales guy approached, I told him I was interested in a cheaper Nikon model. Then I let him talk me up to the A560. That gave me the leverage to ask for a $10 discount. He checked with his manager and the answer came back negative. The A560 was already priced at cost, he said. So I let him talk me up again, to the SD1000, and asked for double the discount. He gave it to me.

Salesmen are programmed to use your emotions against you, Steve Waterhouse tells me. He should know: His consulting firm, the Waterhouse Group, has spent the past 20 years showing salespeople exactly how to do that. "When your ego enters into the deal, they make money," he says.

But they can be outgeneraled. "One of my favorite phrases is, 'You'd make me a happy customer if you could just help me with this.'" Even if they're not on commission, helping a customer fulfills their training and makes them feel useful. "Now," says Waterhouse, "you're playing to their emotions."

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A store itself can be an obstacle to negotiation. I learned this as I traversed the men's section at Bloomingdale's, where the clothing displays are designed to leverage your interest in the item you came for (a tie) to convince you that related products (a shirt that goes with it) are just as indispensable. "They encourage you indirectly to buy more," says Ed Calabrese, creative director for Mancini Duffy, the company that designed the department and its fixtures. "They want to show that suit jacket with a pair of jeans and a great shirt that can be worn separately or together."

Paco Underhill, who founded Envirosell, is the acknowledged guru of store design. Talking to him, I begin to understand the vast effort stores expend to secure a psychological edge. "The first tool is visual appeal, the use of colors," he says. "Then there's the application of textures. The use of sound. The use of smell. The planner of the 21st-century store is trying to bring as many senses into play as possible."

"If I run a Target," he continues, "I have a good idea of who's in my store on Monday morning versus Saturday night. And I might vary the music based on the demographic. There's a time to play Sinatra. There's a time to play Death Cab for Cutie."

Likewise, in a supermarket, explains Underhill, you put the bakery up front—it's hard to resist the smell of freshly baked bread. You put the flowers by the doorway, because they're an impulse purchase. You force customers to move through the produce section first, because fresh fruits and vegetables are a feast for the senses.

The lesson for the canny negotiator is clear: Know exactly what you want before you enter a store, and also know exactly how badly you want it. Because just being there is going to make you want it more.

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Back to the batteries

Near the end of my month, I found myself walking by the store where the guy had sold me two batteries for $2. From the outside, the store seemed rock hard, as if chiseled out of quartz. Some things just can't be negotiated, and a pack of batteries from a magazine shop might be one of them.

Nevertheless, I went in. It wasn't about the money anymore, or even repealing the chump tax. The chump tax was history for me. Kaput. What remained was an almost ornery refusal to let anyone convince me that my own interests count for nothing.

The store was empty. Just a thirtyish woman behind the counter. "You sell batteries, right?" I said. She nodded. "I have a really strange question for you. How many lottery tickets would I have to buy for you to throw in one free double-A battery?"

When she smiled, I knew I had a shot. "Let's see," she said. "How many? I have to think. I'd have to sell, like, ten $1 tickets."

"So if I bought 10 tickets you'd throw in one battery?"

"No, no, no," she said quickly. "I wouldn't make any money."

A few minutes later, we came to an agreement: $20 worth of lottery tickets and one free double-A battery. She placed it upright on the counter with a smile.

It was my best deal yet.

Go on to the next page for solid tips on finding the deals...

WHERE THE DEALS ARE

You can't negotiate everything. But shop smart, and you'll still save big.

At the supermarket

Look up or down. "The better bargains start below your waist and above your head," says Paco Underhill, the founder of Envirosell and author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. Food companies pay "slotting fees" for eye-level shelf space, so buying their food means you help foot their advertising bill. Also avoid the display cases at the ends of the aisles -- the locations imply savings, but these products are rarely discounted.

At the electronics store

Focus on the foyer. Big-box tech stores showcase their best deals (with savings of up to 50 percent) right inside the front door. "The idea is to induce shopping momentum, where once you buy one item, you're more likely to pick up others," says Leonard Lee, Ph.D., an assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School.

At the clothing store

Cut to the corners. Retailers usually position the deepest discounts in the far corners of the rear of the store. "This forces customers to walk through the store, where they see other items," says Underhill. "If you buy a discounted suit, maybe you'll pay full price for the shirt, tie, and shoes that go with it."

At a family restaurant

Order a killer app. Restaurants like Applebee's and T.G.I. Friday's try to create the perception of value by upsizing their portions. "Many are now offering as a starter what was once considered an entrée," says Collin Payne, acting director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab. "Order just an appetizer and you'll cut costs, reduce your calorie intake, and still feel full."

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